Thank you for visiting my website!

For a free 20 minute consultation,

call (510) 210-3984

email denise@denisekralj.com

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My clients often feel surprised and relieved at how accessible, empowering, and transformative the healing path can be. 

Some people who have come to me have been:

 

Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA); people using any 12 step program (ACA, AlAnon, AA, CoDA)

Teachers, writers/artists, activists

Those in the tech and design industries

Therapists and MFT interns 

First- and second-generation immigrants

Multi-racial couples and families

LGBTQA

 

I have been licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist since 2010 (and worked as an intern since 2006). I am trained in Internal Family Systems (level 1), working toward IFS certification, and primarily offer an integrative "parts work" approach. I also use and blend components of other modalities that clients may ask for or prefer, including neurobiology, EMDR, Flash, Gestalt, various somatic practices, and Sand Tray. These frameworks work well together and have a holistic perspective in common. Please read about my approaches on that page, which shows the larger picture of what has influenced and shaped me as a psychotherapist.

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Essentially, using the IFS model, what I help you do in therapy is turn inward to discover your central, whole Self. You possess innate qualities needed for your own healing work, and I bring myself to the relationship in a way that brings this out and honors your own wisdom. Accessing Self, or enough Self Energy, makes it possible for you and I to work with your inner Parts, who are often frozen in the past and have extreme roles. Staying more in your Self Energy also helps connect you meaningfully in relationships. It's a good thing, because what often brings people into therapy is a disharmony or difficult cycle within themselves, and with others. With curious, compassionate, and courageous attention to these Parts that are trying in their own way to help but are causing discord, the painful cycles give way to a sense of unity inside and outside.

 

A main purpose in therapy is to work with your internal system, but I also help you understand how your contexts and external systems have impacted you, and may continue to. Together we can release internalized burdens and traumas that are stuck in your system, and that makes it more possible to handle constraints and collective burdens from the outside world.